A Wall Street Journal Bulletin

What a great word chaos used to be—used well in literature, used for hilarious effect in “Get Smart” (for evildoers KAOS).

But this deadline-inserted favorite is certainly being overworked. The problem is that we use it when we probably mean confusion or disorder, or simply a disruption, but instead leap immediately to CHAOS!!

Rulings & reminders

● Rain forest, two words, is Webster’s style, and ours.
● Flight 93 crashed “near” or “just outside” Shanksville, Pa.
● To clarify, we don’t use the article “the” before Islamic State, the militant group operating in Iraq and Syria.
● We often use reticent when we mean reluctant, as a reader pointed out.
● The Ebola virus is capitalized since it is named after the Ebola River. Read More »

An otherwise-lovely Page One article included the phrase that “Texans prize enormity.”

Hold on, pardner! Enormity means great evil or outrageousness in addition to size, not great size.

Courtesy counter

A reader criticized us after an article on the reviled warlord Joseph Kony called him Mr. Kony on second reference. At the Journal, we afford more courtesy, in a grammatical sense, to certain notorious figures than they give to their victims.

Rulings & reminders

● Management consultant Booz & Co. has been renamed by PricewaterhouseCoopers as—get ready—Strategy&.
● It is Dartmouth College, not Dartmouth University. We have had multiple corrections on this.
● There is no “Styrofoam cup,” a Marketplace article reminded us. Dow Chemical Co.’s Styrofoam is an industrial material not used in cups. Read More »

This headline caused a ruckus: “At Amazon, Gantlet for New Hires.” The reader howling began immediately. “It’s GAUNTLET ! Not GANTLET ! WSJ” was a typical comment. Other readers defended us.

We stood by our spelling.

One Scotch, one whisky, one ruling

Scotch whisky aficionados have long complained about our edict that the words, when separate, are to be rendered as scotch (lowercase) and whiskey (with an e). We’ve decided that Scotch should retain its uppercase S in all references, and references to the Scotch, Canadian or Japanese varieties should be spelled whisky. The rest are whiskey.

Rulings & reminders

● Janet Yellen is to be chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, in our style.
● Prekindergarten, not pre-kindergarten with a hyphen, is the way we spell it. But it is pre-K on second references.
● Fiat SpA and Chrysler Group LLC are now Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV.
● Argentine, rather than Argentinian, is our preferred noun and adjective. We prefer Argentine peso.
● Junk bond no longer needs quotes around the term.
● Briticism alert: We’ll never be royals…. In the WSJ, we don’t use “sacked” for fired, or “in hospital.” Read More »

Why is it our preference to refer to the Federal Reserve’s bond-buying programs? Because that is the closest, most understandable way to describe what the Fed is actually doing these days. It is buying bonds. Within an article, we can sometimes refer if necessary to the jargon of “quantitative easing, or QE.” But the word stimulus can be used in some phrases, such as the Fed’s stimulus attempts, since the bond buying is indeed an attempt to stimulate.

Rulings & reminders

● Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is our style – Sergei not Sergey.
● Recent hyphen hiccups: $85 billion shouldn’t be hyphenated. African-American is. (And we missed the one in Scooby-Doo.)
● Janet Yellen would be chairwoman of the Fed, by her preference. (And it’s Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Pelosi.)
● Brinkmanship is the Webster’s preferred spelling for the suddenly popular word, in light of what has been going on in D.C., not brinksmanship.
● Hurricane and typhoon are uppercase when part of the name of one – Hurricane Gerry – but we’re going lowercase on mere storms (tropical storm Matt, superstorm Alex).
● We’ll go along with anti-euro, for now, since antieuro is a tough read.

A word on ‘live quotes’ online

WSJ.com’s live stock quotes – those colorful little “chicklets” with the stock quote that appear online next to a company name – give readers relevant and integrated real-time market data in the article. In some articles, however, a live quote isn’t necessary or even appropriate. Read More »

“We’re all waiting with baited breath,” we quoted a man as saying, “doing our rain dances.”
Aah, a common error bit us again, like a shark. The phrase is bated breath.

Goofs on Google

Although we may correct our errors quickly on the Web, our mistakes have longer lives on Google Search and Google News – and readers notice.

Massive overuse

We still overuse the word “massive,” to the point of ruining what should be a powerful word, used sparingly.

(Funny story: In our past life as obituary writer/intern during high school, the first thing we were warned to avoid is the phrase “a massive Christian burial” in obits. Novice reporters would put it in their copy, mishearing the funeral-home contact saying “a Mass of Christian Burial” on the phone.) Read More »

The Journal’s standards editor, Deputy ME Elyse Tanouye, in reminding the staff about maintaining journalistic standards, elaborated on some points from the stylebook’s entry on anonymous sources. We should strive to keep sources of information on the record, but when anonymity is unavoidable, we should describe the people being quoted as specifically as possible, to indicate any possible biases.

Super suggestions

Gisele Bündchen, the supermodel who got into a super fuss about quarterbacks after the Super Bowl, uses the umlaut over the “u,” so we should, too.

But, speaking of super, super PACs remain much in the political news (sometimes misused with a capitalized Super). Articles with more than cursory mentions of them should explain that super PACs are political-action committees that can accept unlimited funds to help finance campaigns on behalf of particular candidates.Read More »

The adjectives big, major and key are running rampant in our pages. Big had 845 hits on Factiva, major had 544 and key 368. If a sentence or headline reads just as well without these worn-out adjectives, please eliminate them.

Whoa to woes

Speaking of overused words, take our woe, please, as Henny Youngman said about his wife.

Style tweaks

Some changes in Journal style:

● Long-standing, hyphenated, is our new style for the adjective, in line with the dictionary’s preference. This hyphenation of long-standing brings it in line with other hyphenated “long-“ words: long-standing, long-suffering, long-lasting, long-term. The adjective longtime remains an exception to the hyphen rule – in the stylebook and dictionaries.

● The stylebook now also has an entry for 11th hour, rather than eleventh hour. The rescue came at the 11th hour; an 11th-hour rescue. This is an exception to Webster’s. Read More »

● Dramatic and dramatically are overused and often deletable descriptives. They have appeared 1,152 times in the past 12 months. Although the legitimate use of the words in our drama and other arts coverage contributes substantially to the tally, we could dramatically cut back in general usage by deleting the words or switching to the likes of sharp, sudden, striking – or anything but iconic. Read More »